Curtain
by marmaroth
Summary: There is a difference between knowing and being, and this is a difference Uni knows all too well. Uni tribute. Based off Chapter 279, so GammaxUni, obviously. Pen name formerly nagashinokuro


_**. curtain .**_

_by_

_n a g a s h i . n o . k u r o _

* * *

_the sky that day was lovely, but she couldn't see it through the veil of flames._

There is a difference between knowing and being.

There is a difference between knowing and being, and this is a difference Uni knows all too well.

Because she knows what is going to happen, but it is entirely different from making it happen.

Her subordinates her comrades her friends her family (her _other _family—and for a moment she is torn, but she dares not be torn because of what she'll have to choose) the rainbow that they form, they are all with her, even though she can't see them, not yet, not yet. She can feel them and that's enough. She can feel their support and their hope and their excitement and their desolation and their silence, a tense silence they keep only because they know how crucial these coming seconds are to them and to her, the one who has been entrusted with these seconds.

These are the people who knew her mother and her grandmother before her. As they are silent she shares their memories, left behind like imprints on eternally shifting sand.

_(a smooth oakwood table—a basket of pastries—a smile, the sound of arguing, chatter, laughter, silent tears—a flash of light that was the beginning and end of everything)_

These are the people who know better than anyone the pain she is about to go through and the pain she has gone through. These are the people who can understand her where Gamma and the rest of the Giglio Nero, family though they are, loved though they are, cannot.

_(happy days and sunshine, even though the sunshine now seems too bright, casting a veil of brilliance over what she could have seen)_

She wonders, Uni does, if her family will forgive her. She wonders how long it will take for them to suppress their grief and pain, just as they suppressed it (and suppress it still) upon losing her mother and her grandmother; only this time there will be no "replacement," no new Uni to staunch the wounds. She wonders if they know how much she loves them, so much, so much that she has to leave. Because before she can be Uni _(who wants to stay)_, before she can be Giglio Nero _(who wants to love)_, she is an Arcobaleno. And before she is an Arcobaleno, she is the key, entrusted with everything, denied of everything.

But she is still Giglio Nero, she knows, and they will love her and miss her and want her back, because that is the way humans are. They lost her once already and they will lose her again. They are her family, the best Family there is: not as strong as the Vongola, no, but they are fiercely loyal, loyal enough to lose her once and endure the wanting, and loyal enough to lose her twice and endure the wanting again.

Vongola, Vongola, Vongola. Sawada Tsunayoshi. She remembers meeting him, long ago, and she sees him through her comrades' eyes. _(They're not her comrades, not really, they are her children and they are a part of her, and only when together are they a whole.)_ He looks horrified and desperate, and he cares, and she loves him for it, just as she loves them all. He has only met her once: she has met him a thousand times.

Everything rests on the two of them. She is to sacrifice. He is to protect. She knows she will follow her role. He will follow his, because it is in his nature and in his heart: pure and strong and innocent.

_(for a moment she remembers another Sawada Tsunayoshi, from another day, with the same heart: strong and pure and innocent, like her and unlike her, because he sacrificed in order to protect)_

_(she remembers watching his sacrifice, under the veil of blinding white, and knowing hoping wishing, they would meet again another day)_

But he is selfish, too, and that is why she knows she can trust him.

"_**Wait, Uni! There's no reason for you to sacrifice yourself for the Arcobaleno!"**_

He's wrong, and he knows he's wrong, but he shouts as if speaking the words out loud will make them true. He is selfish, so selfish, but then again, so is she. This is her role to play; the script has already been written; she knows the lines by heart.

_**So why, why, why, why does her heart hesitate?**_

_(a momentary image: a desecrated corpse, crumbling bones, rotting flesh, the frayed white edges of a symbol and a sign)_

The flames are so beautiful. They glow and grow and they wreath her other family, they wreath the future, and they wreath the past. And, above all, they wreath her. They are lovely and beautiful, so beautiful, so bright, but beneath that brightness _(so like the sunlight long ago)_ she can sense it. Revival, rebirth, life, newness, cycle: death, sacrifice, and end.

_**I…**_

This is her role; the lines cannot be changed; if the lines are changed, the play is ruined, and the audience will never be able to walk away.

_**I'm scared…I'm scared!**_

But she is still a child. She is still a child, and at the moment the role she has been given seems too big for her, too intimidating. The tears come pouring out of their own accord, like raindrops: but the flames have diminished and there is not sunlight enough for a rainbow to appear.

"_**Even if she is the Princess of the Arcobaleno, she's still just a child."**_

She is scared, she is terrified, but everyone around her is depending on this, on her.

"_**It's alright, Uni! Let's think of another way around this!"**_

"_**Uni-chan! Please stop!"**_

But she cannot stop.

_**Mother, Grandmother…I'm scared.**_

_("Uni, when everything around you is sad, smile and brighten the day.")_

She smiles, but the smile does not belong to her: it belongs to her mother, her grandmother before them, and to the ones watching over them all. The play cannot end, it cannot end like this. These lines, they are tearing her apart to say—

"_**I'm sorry, I'll be fine…there is no other way."**_

And she thanks them. It is not written in the script, but she thanks them, thanking them for caring and loving and giving her nothing but pure warmth and sadness everywhere her intuition sees. She is thanking the Vongola, and her family, and her Family, and Sawada Tsunayoshi. She can barely see them now, the veil of flames is so strong, so bright, so beautiful, but she can hear their hearts crying for her

_**[and a brash voice no one else can here except for they seven: "don't worry, it doesn't hurt at all. easier than falling asleep."]**_

_**[another voice, hardened but soft: "shut up, skull. you should know, you were the first one of us to die. idiot."]**_

_**[she wants to laugh and she wants to cry, but the tears come out first, even though the smile holds]**_

_thank you._

She is prepared to die.

_(a kind smile, not meant for her—a love denied and misplaced—and blindness, always blindness)_

No.

That's a lie.

She is still terrified. She's scared out of her wits, she is. The flames are so bright, so beautiful, so beautiful she almost wants to succumb: but there is still that lingering sadness and that lingering fear.

_**["I must…the time has finally come for me to be able to make good use of my powers…this is the only chance I can take…and my destiny, which I cannot escape from."]**_

Suddenly, the world around her shakes, and in momentary shock she wonders vaguely if her spirit has already been dislodged from her body. But, no, it was the barrier breaking

_(the curtain tearing, the stage crumbling to pieces, the fourth wall giving way)_

"_**That's good enough for me!"**_

And then she thinks, she really thinks, that the flames have taken her, because there's no way she can be hearing that voice—the one voice that has remained silent in this whole interval of faltering and resolve, the one voice she did not want to hear because she would not be able to continue if she heard it, and the one voice she wanted to hear above anyone else's.

"_**Hey, princess."**_

His blonde hair is a mess, he is bruised and bloody and battered, his clothes are torn. But his smile is still so kind, and beautiful, so beautiful in her eyes, even more beautiful than the flames, even then.

And even as she wants to run to him, to cry into his arms and pretend that he is her knight in shining armor, let him take her away just this once, she can't. She watches as he opens his mouth to speak, and she is paralyzed

_(nonononodon'tdon'tdon'tdon'tsayanythingdon'tmakemestay,pleasedon't—)_

Because the moment he asks her to stay, him of all people, she knows she will give in.

"_**I finally get to see you, only to have you slip away yet again. That's not very fair, is it?"**_

The voices, the voices that could convince her otherwise, could save her this pain, are oddly silent.

"_**Won't you use my flames, too?"**_

And he embraces her.

And he is so warm, so warm, so warm, and so beautiful, so beautiful, even more beautiful and warmer than the flames: and she realizes that there is a flare of electric green around them, enveloped by her own orange light. The tears flow. She has not the heart to stop them.

"_**I won't leave you alone."**_

Gamma, Gamma, Gamma—

"_**Do you remember what you whispered in my ear so long ago?"**_

"_Because, just like my mother before me, I…like you, Gamma."_

"_**I still haven't given you an answer."**_

He lowers his head

_(there's the height difference, she didn't notice it before, it's been so long and she's only seen him from a distance through the veil: but it's smaller now)_

_(did he shrink or did she grow? or is it just that they're not as far apart?)_

that smile

_(kind smile, soft eyes, loyalty like flame, but blind, blind, always blind—)_

a short, soft whisper

"_**I love you, Uni."**_

The voices all around her are silent. The hearts around her cry, pain and sorrow on parting, pain and sorrow on losing, because that is the way humans are: they are selfish. They don't want to lose.

_(He is the most selfish of them all, he refuses to lose her altogether, and she loves him for it.)_

"_**Come on…that's not what your mother taught you."**_

_In the hearts of her Family, the hearts of her family, the heart beating so close to her, and her own heart. The imprints on eternally shifting sand, the legacy that can never be forgotten—_

"_Uni, when everything is sad, smile and brighten the day."_

"_Uni, when you're happy, smile with your heart."_

The others around her cry as one, and a part of her is terrified, but her other family awaits, and Gamma is holding her tightly, so tightly that the part of her that was terrified is soon gone, and she can feel his warmth.

And she smiles. She smiles because the thing most important to her was the only one not in the script, the only one she could not foresee, and in the end he was her knight in shining armor after all: not to carry her away, no, but to take her with him.

"_Uni, when you're happy, smile with your heart."_

_**Yes, Mother.**_

* * *

_**[curtain]**_

* * *

**I cried so hard when Uni died, but I think they downplayed her death too much. Reborn! doesn't do emotions too well, actually. I mean, she's a kid, sacrificing her life for the good of the world. That warrants at least some kind of tribute, don't you think?**

**I love the Arcobaleno. That is all. I feel a little sad I couldn't sneak in some ColonelloxLal, though…**


End file.
